Quicktime Flaw Makes Windows Vulnerable to Attack
GNUCitizen, a security think tank, has apparently discovered a new flaw in Apple’s QuickTime multimedia player. The new vulnerability can be exploited to compromise PCs running Windows Vista SP1 and XP SP2. Although details are a bit thin at the moment, the GNUCitizen blog has published a movie purporting to show the attack in action.
If you watch the film above (might want to mute that techno soundtrack if that’s not your bag) you’ll see that the attack uses a maliciously crafted file, which, when opened, begins to spawn its own processes. The file used in the movie opens applications like Paint, Calculator and Notepad (or at least that’s what it looks like is happening).
The flaw was discovered by Petko D. Petkov who has previously published flaws in QuickTime, Gmail and PDF files. The GNUCitizen blog says that Apple will be notified, but so far the company not responded.
Petkov hasn’t released the details of the vulnerability pending a response from Apple. For the time being there’s probably no need to worry. It’s extremely unlikely that this vulnerability is in the wild, but, as with any file you download, use caution when opening media files from sources you don’t know.
[via PC World]
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